7 Signs Your Organization is Working in Silos

Spotify, JPMorgan, Sonos, Meta, Microsoft, Ernst & Young. Those are just some of the companies that are experiencing reorganizations in 2023 due to layoffs. While economic uncertainty seems to be the primary reason for this, the reorganization of company structures proves to be an advantageous opportunity to accommodate one of the biggest challenges in the marketing industry today: siloed ways of working.

A recent My Customer.com survey showed 40% of company employees reporting that different departments have their individual agendas resulting in the employees feeling inadequately supported by their coworkers. In another survey, less than 1/3 of marketers believe their sales and marketing teams are strongly aligned, leaving almost 70% of marketers who do not share the same experience.

Siloed ways of working refer to a fragmentation of the workplace, where different marketing functions are isolated and disconnected and operate independently without sufficient communication or collaboration between the different teams and departments. This fragmentation of the workplace can be a major barrier to working efficiently, communicating effectively, and delivering optimized and best-in-class customer experiences. Other issues following organizational silos are:

• Department isolation
• Lack of knowledge sharing
• Duplication of efforts
• Inefficient resource allocation
• Fragmented customer experience
• Hindered innovation

While employees might be very aware of the fragmented ways of working, and subsequently experience the negative effects in their work, managers often fail to spot the silos occurring in front of their very eyes. Here are seven indicators that can suggest your company is working in silos:

1. Limited cross-communication: Lack of effective interdepartmental communication as teams rarely interact, share information, or collaborate.
2. Disenfranchised employees: When people do not feel like they are part of a larger team, working collectively together towards a larger purpose, they may experience a lack of motivation and become unproductive, unhappy and disenfranchised from the company.
3. Fragmented decision-making: Decentralized decision-making with each team or department drawing conclusions based on their own respective goals and priorities that lead to suboptimal decisions and a lack of strategic alignment.
4. Lack of cross-function collaboration: Isolation of departments can result in the development of an “Us vs Them” mentality where departments are not seen as collaborators but rather as obstacles to success or competitors.
5. Misaligned goals and task duplication: When objectives are misaligned and not communicated, task duplication almost certainly happens as there is no clarity on what each team is working on. Misalignment of goals can also create internal competition and collectively hinders the achievement or progress of the organizational shared goals.
6. Siloed data and information: Data and information might not be readily accessible and available to all the relevant teams as information in silos tends to be centralized preventing a holistic understanding of customers and market trends.
7. Lack of customer-centricity: Broken and inconsistent customer experiences due to teams failing to have a complete view of the customer journey.

There are multiple ways to overcome siloed ways of working to enhance collaboration, streamline processes, and improve overall effectiveness. While the impact of siloed ways of working can vary across organizations and often context-specific problems arise from this issue, it is important to assess each organization’s situation individually to successfully develop tailored solutions.

If your organization is experiencing organizational silos, Flock is an extremely experienced and qualified partner to help you overcome this and optimize your ways of working. You can reach out to us via hello@flock-associates.com and see more about our work within ways of working here.

Sources:

• https://www.cmswire.com/leadership/5-signs-your-organization-is-too-siloed/
• https://www.mycustomer.com/experience/engagement/the-stats-that-prove-silos-are-your-biggest-cx-challenge
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-trends
• https://www.businessinsider.com/layoffs-sweeping-the-us-these-are-the-companies-making-cuts-2023